[Lasnetmail] “True Compañeras”: Women’s Participation in the Popular Movement of Oaxaca

[Viola Wilkins]

“True Compañeras”: Women’s Participation in the Popular Movement of 
Oaxaca
by Yakira
February 7, 2007

Women have not only acted as participants in the ongoing popular 
movement in Oaxaca, but have also profoundly shaped the course of its 
history. They have created some of the most powerful stories and 
moments in the past nine months, and have helped tell them. Stories of 
women who have built the movement are everywhere in Oaxaca. There are 
the stories of housewives arrested and beaten by police, who in 
response have begun to organize for the first time in their lives. 
There are the stories of elderly women from local communities who have 
cooked huge pots of food for people guarding barricades and soothed 
tear-gassed eyes with vinegar and Coke. Then there are the stories of 
women who have been involved since the beginning, participating in the 
teachers’ strike or organizing the movement to support it. Their 
stories, of personal histories aligned with the movement since its very 
inception, are the ones that may best shed light on how women have 
helped create a widespread and lasting popular resistance in Oaxaca.

Florina Jiménez Lucas is one of those women. She is a teacher, and 
looks very much the part. She sits still and composed, her red suit 
bright against a plastic chair, as she tells her own story in an even, 
measured tone. Through her long career as a teacher, she has worked in 
many of Oaxaca’s most marginalized indigenous communities, where she 
has witnessed the conditions of extreme poverty and injustice that 
exist in the state. This intimate knowledge of poverty and struggle led 
Florina to participate as a longtime active member of Section 22, the 
teachers’ union.

In 2006, she joined many other teachers in setting up a camp in the 
central square of Oaxaca’s capital city as part of an annual strike to 
protest poor living conditions and teachers’ salaries in the state. 
When the movement grew following a police attack to dislodge the camp, 
Florina’s participation grew alongside it. She introduced her husband 
to the popular movement; he and their three children became her 
frequent companions at meetings and marches. As a family, they 
participated in guard duty at barricades placed throughout the city to 
keep police from attacking neighborhoods. Florina or her husband often 
spent entire nights on watch.

Her reflections on the movement continued to deepen, leading her to 
wonder about her own community’s involvement. She refers to San Felipe, 
the area where she lives, as “a forgotten town where powerful men have 
bought up large plots of land.” She says that “extreme poverty and 
extreme wealth live side by side” in San Felipe, and that the state’s 
powerful figures often hold meetings in the “castles they have built” 
there. On July 1, she organized the first group of neighbors to take 
action in San Felipe. They covered the community with posters in 
support of the popular movement. On that same day, governor Ulises Ruiz 
arrived in San Felipe to attend a meeting. The words and images of his 
opposition were there to greet him.

One month later, Florina participated with 20,000 others in a women’s 
march that was to become historic. Since the inception of APPO, one of 
its principal demands had been for adequate coverage of the popular 
movement on radio stations and public television. As the media 
continued to favor the government version of events, women decided it 
was time to take action and organized a march for August 1, 2006. The 
March of Pots & Pans, as it became known, turned into a notorious 
chapter in the history of APPO; Leyla Centeno, a young activist who 
helped organize the march, tells the story of that day in vivid detail.
As Leyla recounts the events as they unfolded and outlines the waves of 
repression and resistance that followed, she conveys her passion for 
the movement that has quite literally taken over her life. Leyla was a 
student at the state university as well as a member of the Committee in 
Defense of the People’s Rights (CODEP) when the widespread popular 
movement arose; as her organizing work and responsibilities within the 
movement grew, she was soon forced to leave her studies behind. Her 
example speaks to the critical role that both students and women have 
played in the popular movement, and her narrative of August 1 speaks to 
her continued sense of awe and pride in its accomplishments.

She tells how, as the march progressed, women started to turn to one 
another and spread the idea of heading towards Channel 9, the state-run 
television station. She says, “taking over Channel 9 was something that 
the teachers’ union and APPO had talked about, but nobody had ever gone 
so far as to actually do anything about it.” Her eyes widen as she 
recalls how the women surrounded the television station and demanded 
live airtime to voice their demands. Although their initial request was 
for just fifteen minutes, when the management refused to grant them any 
airtime, the women took over the building and occupied its studios.

The entire takeover happened without any violence. The women’s first 
broadcast aired that same night, and began, “Today, we family women, 
armed only with bravery, decided to take over this corrupt station once 
and for all.” Speaking of the management at Channel 9, the women 
continued, “they have not wanted to broadcast the popular unity that we 
are living as part of this movement; so now it is time, we have had 
enough, and we are asking you, our good neighbors of Oaxaca, to join in 
the struggle of these brave women.” The women broadcast stories and 
films from the movement, as well as cultural programs including pieces 
on indigenous music, art and dance, for three consecutive weeks. The 
ratings for Channel 9 had never been higher.

At 4:00am on August 21, unidentified assailants opened fire on the 
women occupying the building and destroyed the station’s satellite, 
cutting off its signal. This violence was part of a growing, brutal 
repression against the popular movement and the people of Oaxaca. On 
August 10, Florina Jiménez Lucas experienced that violence firsthand. 
While participating in another march alongside her husband, she heard 
shots ring out nearby. Her husband was shot nine times and killed. The 
autopsy report confirmed that he was shot from above, with bullets from 
.22 and .38 caliber weapons, which are standard police-issue. Florina 
continues to participate in organizing and protesting, and has been 
speaking publicly about her husband’s death since August. The 
government has challenged the findings of the autopsy report and has 
not proceeded with a criminal investigation. She has been threatened 
and followed since his death, and has had to leave her house; she says 
it is the support of other women and families in APPO that has helped 
her survive.

Partly as a way to organize concrete means of support for women who 
have suffered the effects of violence, arrests, death and 
disappearances, and partly as a way to consolidate and defend the power 
that women had accumulated during months of organizing, the women of 
APPO organized to create a women’s arm of the movement. The new 
organization was officially established at an assembly held on August 
31, 2006; it was named the August 1st Coordinating Body of Oaxacan 
Women (COMO). Leyla Centeno, one of the founders of COMO, says “there 
was already a women’s movement, but we needed to give it organization 
and structure; it was time to truly include ourselves in the struggle.” 
She says that women from many different sectors and regions of Oaxaca 
took part in that first meeting, and have since begun to say not only, 
“I am APPO,” but also, “I am COMO.” While the COMO manifesto created on 
that day echoes APPO in demanding justice, dignity and autonomy and 
proposing concrete means of achieving such demands, it also includes a 
critical demand for gender equity and specific proposals to change 
social and educational conditions to improve the lives of women.

COMO continued to organize through the months of September, October and 
November, despite increasing levels of repression and state-sponsored 
violence. Its effect was clearly seen during the Constitutional 
Congress held by APPO on November 10-12, when members voted to 
establish gender equity requirements in representation. Although a 
proposal to establish a 50-50% gender split for representatives was not 
approved, the assembly passed a resolution to ensure that women 
comprise at least 30% of all representatives. While the rejection of 
the 50-50% resolution reflects the continuing tendency to undervalue 
women’s participation, it is nevertheless highly significant in Mexican 
politics that a large and powerful popular movement adopted such a 
binding, explicit gender equity clause.

On December 17, 2006, the women took to the streets of Oaxaca once 
again. After twenty-one days held incommunicado in prison, 43 of the 
141 people who had been arrested during the Seventh Mega March were to 
be released. The atmosphere at that moment in Oaxaca was one of 
suppressed fear and stealthy repression. The government was preparing 
for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations by erasing the marks of APPO 
on the city; the governor was claiming that everything had “returned to 
normal.” As the prisoners were brought to a small plaza outside the 
city center, women organized a reception line to greet family members 
and compañeros with flowers, hugs, shouts and banners. A few released 
prisoners spoke to local and international independent press gathered 
in the square. Others spoke with international journalists and 
activists in private the next day, accompanied by Leyla Centeno and 
other women from COMO as they gave their difficult testimonies.

As 2007 arrived and brought with it Three Kings Day, the traditional 
Mexican day for exchanging Christmas gifts, the women continued their 
support of prisoners – those still in prison as well as those released 
– and their families. COMO organized a public collection site in the 
center of the city where they gathered gifts for children from affected 
families. Piles of colorful toys, traditional cakes, and school and art 
supplies rose in front of the Santo Domingo Cathedral. A children’s 
march was organized to arrive at the city center and culminate in a 
family festival. The government placed large buses across the 
children’s path, and surrounded the women with metal barricades guarded 
by riot police. The children changed their route; the women waited out 
the police, who had broken a judicial injunction ordering them to 
permit free access to the area. The day was marred by illegal 
repression and intimidation, but ended in celebration.

Despite such acts of repression, as well as the widespread use of 
violence and torture, the movement in Oaxaca has endured. Women such as 
Florina Jiménez Lucas and Leyla Centeno have played a crucial role in 
ensuring that it does. Whether they are marching with pots and pans in 
hand, speaking publicly in newspapers or on the air, organizing behind 
bars in high-security prisons, or greeting loved ones returning from 
painful detentions, women are constantly working to hold the movement 
together. As Leyla Centeno says, not only have women been participating 
in every stage of the movement, they have also been the ones “who come 
every day to the radio stations, the plazas and the barricades to take 
care of the people…they have sustained the movement, they have 
sustained the people who are resisting.” Women have also successfully 
organized to create their own space within the popular resistance, an 
accomplishment that Leyla points out, “is alone one of the biggest 
achievements of this movement and this historical moment.” Women’s 
actions have been crucial to building, supporting and strengthening the 
popular resistance; their voices have expressed both its dignity and 
its rage. As Leyla recalls male teachers shouting during the takeover 
of Channel 9, “Now that’s what I call true compañeras!”

http://www.colectivocasa.org/en/node/396